Can anyone give me some PLD tips?

[Yawnie]

Hi there! First I'd like to say that I'm pretty new to tanking. it's always been a role that's scared me I do have a small amount of knowledge about it though. I've leveled my DRK to 39 (lol), and I've done all low level dungeons up until cutters cry sooooo it's not a lot but I do know the basics.

I managed to get provoke from gladiator at 22, though honestly that was simply by doing levequests

The only reason I started Tanking with the DRK was because I was told that it was pretty easy to keep enmity (Hello unleash). And as much as I'm loving their story I'm not really finding the class all that fun even though I've had little to no trouble playing it in dungeons.


This brings me to the PLD or gladiator in my case
I love seeing other players use it and I find them pretty fun as a class. The thing that really puts me off from playing it is how I constantly see everyone saying how it's a struggle to keep enmity with them until about level 40.

Hence why I'm here twiddling my thumbs and being to scared to even que for halatali lol Anyways, I was hoping all of you Tank pros could give me some advice that could help me in lower level dungeons. I really don't want to give other party members a hard time so I don't want to jump in blindly. Of course I always make sure I'm not undergeared so no worries there.

Thanks in advance

[SpookyGhost]

You'll only have real enmity struggles if you don't keep your gear up to date. Unlike DPS and possibly Healer, tanks rely more heavily on their gear before getting tank stance as the damage DPS output will outscale the enmity you're able to output if you're lagging behind.

GLD is actually fairly simple. In terms of pulling groups of mobs, you want to Flash twice and then start doing your single target rotation. If DPS are AOEing, then obviously you want to focus more on using Flash - while it'll cost you a GCD of damage every time you use it you'll probably lose hate to a Fire 2 happy THM if you don't. Basically, be aware of where your enmity stands on the mobs and try and check out what the DPS are doing. Usually you'll just want to mark your primary target with "1", since marking everything takes too much time and isn't really necessary.

For bosses, get Raging Strikes from Archer and crossclass that until you unlock PLD. Raging Strikes + Fight or Flight will basically give you a ton of enmity and you just FB -> SB [-> RoH] your way to victory.

Defensive CDs are pretty straight forward, use them when you know you're going to take a lot of damage.

If you do end up losing hate in early dungeons it's not that big of a deal, mobs hit fairly weak in these. Once you get Rage of Halone and especially Shield Oath @ 40 then it's smooth sailing from there.

[Ebonwings]

Don't stress too much over it. PLD at lv 30 only has sword oath which is your dps stance until lv 40 which you get shield oath your tanking stance which makes life easier. If you don't have Circle of Scorn which is PLD aoe, increase enmity, and dots just use my lazy PLD style XD open with shield lob, flash 2-3 times, fast blade, riot blade, rinse and repeat for multiple mobs. If you still lose aggro add flash in between. As for tanking single target, use Fast Blade, Savage Blade, and Rage of Halone don't forget to use shield swipe if it proc for extra enmity also use cooldowns to negate some damage. Hope this help in some way.

[garret_hawke]

Open with 3-4 flash then use riot blade once to recover some mp then savage/halone + flash every 2 combo and riot when low on mp. If there is a thm/blm or anyone spamming aoe just flash every combo

[Jpec07]

I was going to reply, but SpookyGhost did such a good job covering the basics of the job that it really isn't necessary to say anything more. Follow his advice, and you'll do fine.

[Februs]

Pld still has the lowest enmity gen even after they get their tank stance, so there are some tricks you're may want to learn early. The biggest trick to learn is how to split your enmity:

After your initial hate grab, consider learning how to split up your enmity strikes (Savage Blade, Rage of Halone (lvl 26), Shield Swipe (lvl 30), and Shield Lob) across multiple targets to secure a lead on their hate. It's a tactic you can learn once you access to your full Rage of Halone combo, and is a good thing to make a habit of because it: 1) helps you secure aggro on peripheral targets, 2) spreads RoH's strength down debuff for added passive mitigation, and 3) allows you to be adaptable when the Dps go wild and start racing each other on different targets.

Keep in mind that, until you are at max level and fully geared, you'll still be relying heavily on Flash and should use it liberally. As you start to level, though, you'll notice you need Flash less. At level 30, you'll gain access to Shield Swipe, which can be used to gain additional enmity on a single target every 30 seconds (with the added effect of pacification). At level 50, one of your Flash casts will be replaced with Circle of Scorn. At MAX level and with top end gear, you should able to reduce your use of Flash usage to the duration of its blind application, varying slightly on the number of enemies you are pulling (additional Flashes may be needed if the number of enemies exceeds your ability to land enmity strikes on all of them before losing hate).

As you level, you should be able to get a feel for how much of a lead you need on enemies to keep hate, but until then you can also use the enmity meters in the party list to keep an eye on things. Just remember that the goal is to be proactive. You don't want to have to chase targets to take back enmity you should have already had. So, instead, try to anticipate which target is going to need the biggest infusion of enmity and split up your love taps accordingly.

[JackFross]

At MAX level and with top end gear, you should able to reduce your use of Flash usage to the duration of its blind application, varying slightly on the number of enemies you are pulling (additional Flashes may be needed if the number of enemies exceeds your ability to land enmity strikes on all of them before losing hate).

For the record:
When you're max level on Paladin with good (i220+) gear, you should use few more than 3 Rage of Halone combos in every level 60 dungeon run you do. Once at the start of each boss if you plan to be in Sword Oath, and from there only used during said boss battles to replace a Royal Authority when you need extra hate. Beyond that, you should never press the button.

With Shield Oath active, you can Flash 2-3 times and then drop a Goring Blade combo (with CoS, FoF optional) on the first target your ST dps is hitting, and maintain FB>RB on that target while spreading GB to the rest of the mobs. If you /need/ a Savage Blade to maintain hate, follow it with Royal Authority, not RoH. The latter should really never be needed in trash pulls when you're evenly-geared. 5% Strength debuff on a single mob who's doing all of 500 damage to you isn't worthy of note for its utility to mitigation.

Also with Shield Oath active, you should never ever need to hit RoH to maintain hate on a dungeon boss. Ever. I don't even need it to hold raid bosses if I tank in Shield Oath!


Also actually on-topic: At any level, if you use FoF before the third hit of your combo, delayed about halfway through the gcd, you can get off a total of 5 combo finishers under that FoF, compared to 4 if you use it at any other time. Especially helpful when fighting from 26-39, when you're stuck with no stance or with Sword Oath. An extra FoF RoH is a significant boon to your enmity generation at the start of a boss.

Other word of advice: Pre-26, Fast Blade > Riot Blade is your highest potency combo. If you safely have hate, you should be using this for additional damage. In solo content out of dungeons, this is the combo you should be spamming. Rage of Halone changes this, making Fast Blade > Savage Blade > Rage of Halone your best combo until level 54.)

[Februs]

5% Strength debuff on a single mob who's doing all of 500 damage to you isn't worthy of note for its utility to mitigation.

What ... are you talking about?

Firstly, Rage of Halone is a 10% strength debuff after level 40, not 5%. Secondly, where are you pulling this magical number of 500 total damage from? The average mob in level 60 content hits for roughly 1200-2500 damage per auto attack (that's not including crits and non-auto attacks). The idea that mobs are only doing a total of 500 damage is a laughable understatement. It's more likely that you're mitigating 200-500 dmg every 2 seconds from a single target. Spread that across multiple targets (say, 4 or more) and you're looking at mitigated damage in the thousands over the course of your average mob pull.

Further, you're way off the mark on Goring Blade's application. GB hits for its full potency if, and only if, it is allowed to tick for it's entire duration. The full duration of GB is 24 seconds. The average Dps group in DF can clear a mob of 3 within that time (and yes, I have timed it using buff timers). Throw in a few Flashes, and the odds of GB going for it's full tick is very low, unless you happen to have very slow Dps team. Further, those 2-3 Flashes that you recommend blow off RoH's combined potency in favour of a whoping ZERO dps over 5 seconds. All this together means that the application of Goring Blade within mob pulls is almost always a potency loss over Royal Authority or even RoH.

The only thing you're even remotely close to being accurate about is utilizing SwO during boss pulls, and even then you're overstating by quite a bit. With comparable gear, there is no way in hell that you are holding hate on a boss over a competent Dps without using RoH at least once, especially not in a raid. If you are, then you're dps team are definitely below the average. Flash is not an option either, because it's a Dps loss of 100% in all single target fights ... so, what's the magical method here? Because the math certainly doesn't add up.

[Ragnorak]

What ... are you talking about?

Lmao man I'm glad you said something cuz I literally got T R I G G E R E D reading that. Smh just Negligent

[JackFross]

Because the math certainly doesn't add up.

Lemme just...

1. RoH in trash pulls. It takes 27s to mitigate approximately 0.6 attacks from 1 mob in a 40s+ encounter. I never said it was 0 mitigation. I said it was "not worthy of note for its mitigation" in a multi-target fight, and I stand by that. It's just a waste of time. If you instead swap from RoH spam/cycle to GB spam/cycle, you can speed up encounters by ~3-4s (it's a difference of +300-400 dps!), which happens to stop each mob from using 1 attack that they would have used if I stood there spamming my hate combo (a total of 3 attacks for 3 mobs!). Which, as a point of discussion, would take approximately 42s to actually mitigate 0.6 attacks from 3 different mobs (a total of 1.8 attacks!). There's some math for you. I /did/ misrepresent the amount of damage a mob does, but none of that impacts the above discussion, which is true regardless how much damage they're doing.

2. GB does not need 24s of time to be useful. It only needs 6s to be more effective than RA in its place. RA only wins in potency if GB is already up on the target you're attacking. GB requires approximately 13s of time to be more effective than RA, including lead-up. Spreading GB to two targets requires approximately 20s to be effective. Three targets is approximately 28s. If you start with 2 Flashes - or even 3 - you're looking at a window of 33-36s of time in which using three GB is effective compared to using three RA. And, as I've said, most mob encounters take 40s or longer, even with competent dps. In a 3-target encounter, I'll GB 1 > GB 2 > GB 3 > RA 1 > RA 2 > and by then everything is usually dead - sometimes it needs a bit more after. With FoF, this rotation can hit upwards of 1000 dps against 3 mobs. RoH in the same circumstance is gonna be sub 700.

3. I hold solidly against BLM bursting for upwards of 2k with a single ShO RoH in my opener, not buffed with FoF. My opener is always FB>SB>RoH>FB>RB>SwO>FoF>GB>etc. I have never had issues. I did a run today with a BLM doing 1500+ on the bosses. I used 2 RoH in the first two boss fights and 1 in the last, compared to 8-8-12 RA combos used in the same encounters and 6-5-7 Goring Blade combos. The BLM was never higher than 80% on the aggro bar. But yeah, you're right. I'm clearly lying or encountering "below average dps." I've done the same with DRGs pulling 1500-1600. It's not novel or exciting or difficult.


You can talk about math not adding up all you want, but it clearly does if it's working.


Also, because your reading comprehension skills are apparently completely garbage, let me try to separate my two statements I made regarding Rage of Halone for you.

1. When you're max level on Paladin with good (i220+) gear, you should use few more than 3 Rage of Halone combos in every level 60 dungeon run you do. Once at the start of each boss if you plan to be in Sword Oath, and from there only used during said boss battles to replace a Royal Authority when you need extra hate. Beyond that, you should never press the button.

^This is completely accurate. As explained above.

2. Also with Shield Oath active, you should never ever need to hit RoH to maintain hate on a dungeon boss. Ever. I don't even need it to hold raid bosses if I tank in Shield Oath!

^This is also completely accurate. I have never once, in all my time playing on Paladin at 60, had to use Rage of Halone for purposes of aggro management while playing as the main tank in Shield Oath. (Sword Oath is another animal entirely, which I never once referenced in regard to my "never use it" discussion here, in case you weren't following!) The only time I ever did was during A3S, when the WHM I was running with was pulling 60-70% overheal in phase 2 and tearing the boss off of me. In the words of my raid leader regarding such a situation: "[That WHM] had more aggro than Eve. No one has more aggro than Eve." - referring to a WHM sub they had once, compared to the hate I crap out with my DRG opener/sustain, which regularly causes hate issues when my DRK tank drops Grit (since he eschews Power Slash) but strangely is never even close to an issue when he's in Grit, despite never using Power Slash.

{Hmm...}